Mental and Behavioral Health
Advocates at Fresno State University asked for more resources to hire additional mental health counselors in order to reduce long wait times and high staff-to-student ratios that they say pose a danger to students in crisis. The university has eight licensed counselors for its 24,000-strong student body, or one counselor for every 3,000 students. That’s the second-highest ratio in the California State University system, and double the 1-to-1,500 ratio recommended by the International Association of Counseling Services. Students may wait 2-3 weeks for a non-emergency appointment during the busy times of the year. The university announced that is will raise student health fees by $52 per year to fund the hiring of additional mental health counselors and an additional case manager at Student Health and Counseling Center.
To illustrate the damaging effect of student loan debt on borrowers’ mental health, the Huffington Post published statistics like, 1 in 10 people say student loans are their top source of stress. And 1 in 15 borrowers with a high debt load have considered suicide because of it.
Dartmouth College‘s counseling service sees a quarter of the total student body, an increase of 60 percent over the last six years. According to Mark Reed, the director of the health service, mental health-related admissions to the health service have increased by 45 percent over the same period. The administration has promised five new counseling positions to be established by approximately 2022, with two of these new counselors to be hired soon.
Following support from the Pac-12 Council and Pac-12 Athletic Directors at their meetings earlier this month, the Pac-12 CEO Group voted to extend the annual $3.6M of funding to the Student-Athlete Health & Well-Being Initiative for a period of 5 years. Additionally, the CEO Group voted to significantly increase to $1.1M annually the portion of funding to on-campus mental health services to provide more support to this critical area of need. Created in 2014, the Student-Athlete Health & Well-Being Initiative is a collective effort between the Pac-12 and its member universities to strengthen and improve the health, general well-being and safety of all student-athletes.
According to Inside Higher Ed, requests to bring emotional support animals to school have increased. Washington State University’s Access Center fielded two or three requests for emotional support animals in 2011. Now the center gets 60 to 75 requests a year, said Meredyth Goodwin, its director. Emotional support animals are meant to comfort students with anxiety, depression or some other mental health issue. But college administrators are struggling to differentiate between students who actually need assistance and those who just want to bring their pet to school. Students need a letter from a mental health professional justifying the need for an emotional support animal, but this type of verification can be obtained easily online.
Diversity and Inclusion
In an attempt to address the admissions gap along income lines, The College Board plans to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT that would capture their social and economic background. This new number is calculated using 15 factors including the crime rate and poverty levels, median family income, housing circumstances, college attendance rates and parental education from the student’s high school and neighborhood. The formula does not consider race, the College Board said, or individual data about a student’s family or financial circumstances. Students won’t be told the scores, but colleges will see the numbers when reviewing their applications. The idea is to give admissions officers a deeper framework for considering SAT scores than the information high schools typically provide. Fifty colleges used the score last year as part of a beta test. The College Board plans to expand it to 150 institutions this fall, and then use it broadly the following year. So far, at least some participating colleges report that the dashboard has helped them admit more disadvantaged applicants. And some admissions officials describe the platform as a promising race-neutral tool that could prove especially useful if the Supreme Court one day strikes down race-conscious admissions policies.
In the latest in a series of lawsuits, Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group, sued the University of Texas at Austin last week, alleging that its consideration of race in admissions violates the Texas Constitution. The nonprofit group also sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014, accusing those institutions of discriminatory admissions practices. The nonprofit accused Harvard of discriminating against Asian-American applicants; the case was tried last year, and a judge is expected to rule this year. Chapel Hill was accused of giving “significant racial preferences” to underrepresented minority applicants. The group says that its lawsuit against the University of Texas at Austin is “nearly identical” to another lawsuit the group filed against the university in 2017. The earlier lawsuit was dismissed.
The Atlantic reports on a new study that found that the “War on Drugs,” launched by the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, may have prevented a large number of black men from receiving a college degree. According to the study, from 1980 to 1985, college enrollment among black men ages 18 to 24 grew slightly faster than it did for their white peers. However, the upward trend started to reverse for black men after the passage of the legislation that included strict enforcement of drug crimes — including mandatory minimum sentencing — that resulted in the disproportionate incarceration of black men. The study found that the probability a black man would enroll in college declined by 10 percent due to the passage of the law, from 22 percent to 20 percent, after researchers controlled for other factors, such as changes in the state-level unemployment rates and the costs of college. The Atlantic asserts that, as the government spent more money sending black men to prison, it devoted fewer resources to programs that would have helped the formerly incarcerated re-enter society. The War on Drugs also included policies that made it nearly impossible for someone with a drug conviction to access financial aid for college.
Sexual Assault and Title IX
According to an investigative report released last week, a now-deceased Ohio State University team doctor sexually abused at least 177 male students from 1979 to 1996. The report also found that school officials failed to take appropriate action despite being aware of numerous claims of the physician’s misconduct over the 17-year period. The abuse included athletes from at least 15 sports and encompassed other students who saw physician Richard Strauss at the school’s student health center and an off-campus clinic. According to the report, the school “had knowledge” of sexually abusive treatment from Strauss as early as 1979, “but reports about Strauss’ conduct were not elevated beyond the Athletics Department or Student Health until 1996.” The report comes more than 13 months after Ohio State announced the first allegations against Strauss who voluntarily retired in 1998 and died by suicide in 2005. The Columbia Dispatch and The Lantern, the student newspaper at OSU, published histories of his career, abuse and investigations.
Sexual Health and Reproductive Rights
Providing round-the-clock access to the morning-after pill has become more common at colleges and universities. According to the Washington Post, it has also become a student-led cause on many schools that don’t provide it. George Mason University in Virginia and colleges and universities in California and Pennsylvania have installed vending machines that dispense the contraceptive pill called Plan B, or a generic version that can be purchased over the counter in stores. Two students at Hampton University created a hotline to provide students with emergency contraception, either delivering it themselves or calling on a group of about a dozen volunteers to help with transportation. They’ve given away 26 units of emergency contraception donated by a group in the community. Hampton University officials distanced the school from the hotline, issuing a campus health advisory informing students it was “not a sanctioned organization or effort.”
Free Speech
Jeffrey A. Sachs, a lecturer in politics at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia spoke with the Chronicle about the moral panic he sees in free-speech debates, why he thinks it’s dangerous, and the reason he doesn’t think today’s college students should be called “snowflakes.”Sachs says that the panic over a free-speech crisis on American college campuses is greatly exaggerated and is concerned that the conversation about repressive policing of speech will further erode conservative students’ trust in their professors. And he’s concerned that isolated campus protests, amplified for maximum outrage, could result in harmful state policies and unconstitutional crackdowns on campus protests.
Physical Health and Wellness
According to CBS Baltimore, records uncovered by the Washington Post show that University of Maryland College Park had an 18-day delay in warning students about a deadly virus spreading on campus that sickened 44 students and killed freshman Olivia Paregol.
College Affordability
While delivering Morehouse College‘s commencement address, billionaire investor and philanthropist Robert Smith announced that he would cover student debt for the entire 2019 graduating class at Morehouse College. Smith, an alumni of the all-male historically black college, is an entrepreneur and founder of the investment firm Vista Equity Partners. According to Morehouse’s president, David A. Thomas, the donation has an estimated value of $40 million and is said to be the largest ever made to an HBCU. According to a report from the Center for American Progress, black students are more likely to take out student loans than their white peers, and nearly half of black borrowers default on their student loans. An article in the Atlantic provided a sobering take on the move, arguing that generosity “is not a salve for systemic problems… one billionaire can only help so many, and more than 40 million people in the United States have student loans. And no graduation gift can help the millions of young people who never complete their degree.”
Ahead of next week’s primary election, Democrats running for Kentucky governor promised during a debate Wednesday to push for increased state funding for higher education. Adam Edelen, one of the leading candidates, said ,”When we have priced higher education out of the reach of the working and middle classes, not only have we made an immoral statement about who and what we are, we have signed our economic suicide note.”
Substance Use
Dartmouth College‘s Good Samaritan policy is designed to alleviate students’ hesitations in making an emergency call for another student’s safety. But it may still come with some consequences. The policy states that “students and/or organizations that seek assistance from [the Department of Safety and Security] and/or emergency services and the individual(s) assisted will not be subject to College disciplinary action with respect to violation of the Alcohol Policy and/or the use of other drugs.” Director of judicial affairs Katharine Strong, who was involved in an institutional review of the policy in 2017, said, “[We want] the focus to be on students getting the medical help they need, rather than being super focused on what the judicial consequences might be.” But When outside Safety and Security’s jurisdiction, students may still face legal trouble. And because a “Good Sam” call is also logged by the College, it raises concerns that information can be used by other departments and offices “for purposes of determining eligibility, membership, certification, employment, internship and/or associations with Dartmouth College.”
Greek Life
The Chronicle explores Central Michigan University’s slow march towards banning the Phi Sigma Phi fraternity after years of reports of sexual assault, drugging of women and hazing. The university only ousted the fraternity in October after a student death. Central Michigan Life, the university’s student newspaper published hundreds of pages of emails and other documents that provide a detailed view of how investigative challenges and simple bureaucracy can keep universities from reining in fraternities that are widely seen as troublesome.
